I have to admit, of all the horrible, awful, disgusting human beings who pollute our current media discourse, and I include the odious Andrew Malcolm, Bill O’Reilly, Steve Doocy, and the many others, if I had to say who was the worst person to ever occupy the public sphere, it would be, hands down, Piers Morgan. Here he is the other night grilling the doctors who, with their staffs, evacuated NYU after power outages, including having the nursing staff carry babies down multiple flights of stairs while manually ventilating them:

MORGAN: Andrew Rubin, you are, as I said, a V.P. of medical center, clinical affairs and affiliates. The obvious question, it seemed to me last night, remains so now, is how could a busy New York hospital have its backup generators fail when it’s had a week at least to prepare for what everyone was saying was going to be a storm of huge magnitude?

RUBIN: First, before I answer that, let me just say how proud I am to work for NYU Langone Medical Center, where we have physicians like Dr. Rudy and staff and nurses and volunteers and the New York City Fire Department and Police Department, who did an extraordinary effort in incredibly difficult circumstances, evacuating all our patients in 12 hours safely.

It is a miracle. They did a terrific job. We are a massive, huge complex. We have many generators. They are tested all the time. This was an unbelievably powerful storm. Many, many things happened that were really beyond anyone’s control. And that’s what just happened. It’s a — it’s a very unfortunate set of circumstances. But thank God we have such an incredible team of people who were able to do heroic work.

Right now, we’re assessing all of our infrastructure. Our goal is to get back online as soon as possible. Our patients, our staff, our doctors want to get back to work. So priority number one right now is assess the infrastructure. Our buildings are safe but assess the infrastructure, see what damage was done. We had ten feet of water — 12 feet of water in our basement, and get the hospital back up and running, get our doctor offices back up and running.

MORGAN: What we’re hearing is that trustees and, indeed, some board members had raised concerns about these generators. And it does seem baffling, as I say, that a New York busy hospital like this could end up having to ferry newborn babies in the middle of a hurricane up and down Manhattan, simply because a hospital like yours, with all its facilities and all its resources, couldn’t get a generator to work.

I mean, is there some big investigation going on now?

RUBIN: Well, I really didn’t come on to talk about the generators. But I can tell you that our generators, we have many. They are tested all the time and in full compliance with all federal and state regulations. And quite frankly, prudence tells us to test them all the time. Our generators were working. This was an unprecedented storm —

MORGAN: but they weren’t working, were they?

RUBIN: They failed.

MORGAN: If they failed, they’re not working, are they?

RUBIN: They started working. And then when the storm waters seeped up the river, things happen with some of the generators. It was a terribly unfortunate event.

But again, the focus here is we got the patients out safely. The staff did a terrific job. We’re very, very pleased with the outcome. And now we’re in recovery mode to get the medical center back up and running.

MORGAN: I understand why it’s your focus. But obviously I think the focus, I would imagine, for the mothers involved last night will be very much what the hell was going on, and why were we having to be moved because of faulty generators. The question I would want to know from the hospital, if I was involved in any way, is how do you have any confidence this won’t happen again? RUBIN: Well, again, I’m not an engineer and I’m not really here to talk about the generators. But I can tell you we have a wonderful institution, great buildings, very, very well running generators. We had an unprecedented storm with an extraordinary amount of water overtaking the city. And we had some problems with those generators.

Mind you, these doctors came on to talk about the heroic action of their staff, but, that’s right, he spent the bulk of the interview berating two physicians about… power generators. Because everyone who has ever been to a hospital knows that pediatricians are in charge of physical operations. And even though they aren’t in charge of that, they tried to answer him, and he wouldn’t accept their response. He simply refused to recognize that the backup generators worked until they got submerged by a tidal surge. It’s almost as if he is so fucking stupid and worthless he doesn’t recognize that when horrible natural events happen, sometimes even back-up plans fail.

And by the way, the five minutes he spent grilling those physicians and the generators and other shit beyond their control, well, suffice it to say, that is five minutes more than he has ever used his CNN platform to discuss his role on the News of the World/Murdoch wiretapping scandals. After all, he was only editor in chief, so how was he supposed to know anything. Unlike those fucking pediatricians, who should know all about the generators at NYU.

I would vote for Mitt Romney if he found a way to make this limey douchebag self-deport.

He is now, at this very moment, flaming Con-Ed for not having the power on quick enough. Can we put Morgan and Sullivan in a pod and launch them back to Liverpool?

Yes, a dickish interview. He missed the important point, though. Perhaps the basement isn’t the best place to locate critical equipment. IIRC, a few buildings in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor had the same issues during Hurricane David in 1979.

We learn by our failures. And older installations built under earlier regulations or design criteria are stuck with what we thought was right a couple of decades ago. (Not saying that’s the case here, I have no way of knowing.)

Better that you should watch Piers Morgan than I. This type of interview is typical of his style and you are spot on with the observation about Morgan’s avoiding his culpability whilst working for Murdoch.

@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Doesn’t matter, this is outside of the Doctor’s control. We’re talking an issue that requires a LOT of engineering and money to retrofit moving emergency generators from lower levels to a penthouse level above ground, and for once-in-a-lifetime events like this, statistically they can’t find it worth the money (it’d almost be cheaper to build a whole new hospital, maybe an exaggeration but economically that would be the preferred route).

Piers Morgan wouldn’t last five seconds in Liverpool. Liverpool’s a tough town, and Liverpudlians have no patience at all for newspaper scum like Morgan. He’d be done for before he cleared the departure lounge. He’d deserve it too. Don’t forget his leading role in phone hacking — bragging about playing Paul McCartney’s private voicemails to his wife Heather — and his famous Sun article “The Poofs of Pop”. Worst Human Being Alive in my book (though the competition is intense in British newspapering).

I think my favorite thing is that this is what a hard hitting interview is supposed to look like. But this fucker only has the balls to pull this shit on someone who doesn’t have any power as he recognizes it, and who doesn’t deserve it. Get someone with actual power in the room with him, and his lips will be magnetically attracted to their genitals.

I’m (almost) an architect. I work primarily on healthcare projects. This hospital appears to have gone above and beyond all the applicable codes and regulations, of which there are many, and shit just….happens. New York is full of old buildings on small sites, and hospitals can’t typically just be scraped off the site and rebuilt. The architects and engineers that worked on that hospital had most likely been working their asses off to come up with the best design solution given some extremely restrictive constraints. Hospitals are always trying to expand their services, in the face of power usage that has grown exponentially, building codes that are updated at least once every three years, and health department guidelines that have made the modern hospital a huge and ridiculously expensive undertaking.

What? You want all the safety and functionality of brand-new buildings in the densest city in the country? I want a fuckin’ pony.

No, that is not the important point that he missed. The important point that he missed is one that John Cole made above: these guys are doctors, they are not responsible for, nor competent to discuss in detail, the physical plant. That’s not what they do.

If he wanted to talk about generators, he should have invited someone else to talk to. But he knows that perfectly well, and just decided to be a dick to both his guests and his viewers. The viewers are not well-served by watching him grandstanding and ambushing his guests.

For those who are second guessing about basement location, do you know how many tons those monsters weigh ? The penthouse location requires a completely different building to take all that weight.

Yes. Could also require an entirely different material structure due to the level of fireproofing required. Piers Morgan can fucking suck it. He’s not just ignorant, he’s whipping his ignorance out of his pants and waving it around.

@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Indeed, what they need is cogeneration / trigeneration (heat and power, or heating, cooling, and power) located higher up, e.g., on the roof.

NYC does use cogeneration fairly extensively already (that’s what all those steam pipes are about) but the newest units are roughly 80% efficient in not wasting any of the input energy, while the older ones are more like 60%.

Speaking as somebody who knows a bit about emergency generators and put a few in hospitals I know this, depending on the Trauma Level of the hospital, most gen sets have to be above the 100 year flood level, which these clearly were not if they failed due to water ingestion.

I know this about diesel generators, they should be exercised under load or they loose starting reliability. By code this is not a requirement but probably will be in a couple of code cycles.

@amk: The old diesels are heavy (and loud). New gas (natural gas) turbine based generators are much lighter and can go on roofs much more easily. There’s still a heck of a lot of retrofit plumbing to do though, to bring the gas up and run heated and chilled water back down.

of all the horrible, awful, disgusting human beings who pollute our current media discourse, and I include the odious Andrew Malcolm, Bill O’Reilly, Steve Doocy, and the many others, if I had to say who was the worst person to ever occupy the public sphere

Typically sloppy Colery here. I mean I’ll take y’all’s word that this Piers guy sucks because I never watch him — but srsly, you can’t just toss that “worst person in media” shit around. Those names don’t even scratch the surface. You are talking literally hundreds of fierce contenders.

@amk: Not really, most buildings have mechanical penthouses with total motor loads exceeding that of many generators, and electrical generators would only be a fraction of the size (they only need to cover critical loads and those requiring standby power, while only a fraction of mechanical systems would also). The generators required to power the emergency system would easily fit on a penthouse level; the issue is it’d be expensive as fuck to support it structurally with a floor not pre-designed for such loads. It’s money, not ability, that limits this.

It’s an ability issue, too, I bet. Keeping the place operational during construction of that type would be challenging, to say the least. In the Citibank building, they were able to go in during off-hours and add structural support when the SE realized they didn’t put in enough, but there’s no real off-time in a hospital.

Just fyi, some datacenters in NY near Wall St were knocked out as well. It’s not just the hospital. Also, it’s not necessarily the generators. The datacenters had the fuel and pumps in the basement and that is what got flooded, not the generators. Where else are you gonna put the fuel and how are you gonna get it there? One datacenter ended up having people carry diesel in buckets up 17 stories of stairs.

It’s easy to sit in front of a computer and flatulate solutions out your ass when you don’t even know all the reasons they did what they did.

Fox News 5 in NYC just teased a segment on Sandy-related damage by showing a PhotoShop’ed picture of the iconic Coney Island Parachute Jump broken about midway up with the top section leaning at 45 degrees from the vertical. My NYC FB friends are aghast that they would do something like that. I said to them “think about all of the lies they are telling that you can’t debunk by looking out the window…”

By tomorrow morning Rush Limbaugh will be reporting that rampaging Blah’s looted the ventilators and left the babies to die.

By tomorrow afternoon the Romney/Ryan campaign will be accusing Democrat doctors of kidnapping the babies, strapping them to the roofs of their cars, and delivering them to Kenyan witch doctors for use in unspeakable Muslim rituals. .

By tomorrow evening Darrell Issa will be calling for Congressional hearings into the Blah looting, the baby torture, the Democrat/Kenyan/Muslim connection, and why Obama was campaigning in Virginia instead of protecting those babies.

@amk: I worked on a project where we put an Uninterruptable Power Supply and battery bank in the penthouse on top of a jail. No problem supporting it all.

But basically, I agree with @suzanne: I’m in a whole other line of work now (stormwater), but trying to do the same thing. Shoehorning new construction to current design standards into areas that were built before them is a real challenge.

Brooks’s column today has to be seen to be believed. It really is a thing at which to marvel. I wouldn’t normally look – I don’t, normally – but with Obama surging I was curious how this self-styled reasonable moderate conservative would react.

Basically, the whole column is about how Obama is a good man and a good President, with good ideas, but hasn’t been audacious and effective enough in office. And Brooks has a tremendous sad that Obama went negative in his campaign. But two things really stand out:

1) The Dog That Barked In The Night-Time. There is nary a mention of one Willard Mitt Romney, except for the bit where an unnamed opponent of Obama’s has been subjected to negative campaigning.

2) The part where Brooks says, and I sh!t you not:

Sure, House Republicans have been intransigent, but Obama could have isolated them, building a governing center-left majority with an unorthodox agenda.

Now, normally I’m not a fan of the way the Right nowadays, from Sarah Palin to the Tea Party, fetishizes some imaginary version of the Constitution that fortuitously happens in every instance to coincide with their preferences and priorities. But I would be obliged if someone could explain to me how, under our Constitution, a President is supposed to achieve sweeping progress on “an unorthodox agenda” by means of a “governing majority” that excludes a caucus that constitutes a unanimously acting majority of the House Of Representatives. It’s an idea whose blithering idiocy comes straight out of the Green Lanternist fantasies of the Firebaggers.

OT-I signed up to go to Virginia with some OFA people this Sunday. Never volunteered for a campaign before, and I have no idea what to expect or if I’ll be of any use.

Cool! Where are you going?

It’ll probably be more chaotic than usual this weekend, but the campaign is well-organized and usually good at training. They’ll probably pair you up with someone more experienced, whatever you end up doing.

I’ve never watched Piers Morgan before, and never will again, but I somehow saw exactly these 5 minutes while the TV was left on the hurricane coverage. It was so … debased. I was embarrassed for humanity.

@ronin122: Most motors are distributed all over the place, structural load wise. If a single or two generators were supplying those loads, they are heavy monsters with concentrated floor load. Unless, we know all the structural details of the building, the weights of the machines, the codes at that time etc., this is all coulda/woulda/shoulda nonsense.

Yes, imma too an engineer, who has a business repairing these failed fuckers. Things fail even under normal circumstances and this was one freakish disaster. Shit happens. Deal with it, which the hospital peeps seem to have and with real commitment. what the fuck, douchebags like this scummy limey know anything about machines ?

@Drew: Well, in 2004 I’d never volunteered for a campaign before and didn’t know what to expect. I’m on my 5th one now. I will say this, you’re in good hands. This is the most organized and smoothest running one I’ve been a part of.

ETA: and don’t worry, you’ll be of use. By the end of the day, if you’re canvassing, you’ll be taking the lead on the “Hi, I’ XXX with the Obama campaign” intros.

By the second day the two of us were splitting the odd and even sides of the street and knocking on doors dolo.

I would be obliged if someone could explain to me how, under our Constitution, a President is supposed to achieve sweeping progress on “an unorthodox agenda” by means of a “governing majority” that excludes a caucus that constitutes a unanimously acting majority of the House Of Representatives.

All Obama had to do was travel to Rivendell and get the elves to help.

Do I have to explain everything around here? Elves are fucking awesome.

@Redshift:
As I said, I don’t read him regularly, so I don’t know the answer to your question. But it can’t be Will; he’s interested neither in recognizing anthropogenic climate change nor in bipartisanship, so he’s unlikely to have cried crocodile tears over the way the mean Democrats forced the noble Republicans to filibuster Cap And Trade.

This. Morgan and all of the armchair architects and engineers in this thread are talking out of their asses. They have absolutely no idea of all of the parameters involved in the decision making of the designers to locate equipment where it was. It reminds me of Schiavo with Senator Frist playing doctor from afar.

What if there was an asteroid hit and those penthouse generators got wiped out?(along with Mr. Morgan, FSM willing) Would people be questioning why the back-up power wasn’t in the basement? Or should there be fucking generators on every floor? Shit happens and people deal with it as happened here.

Not every once-in-a-lifetime natural disaster can be mitigated in legacy structures. You know NYS is due for a big earthquake? Where’s the retrofitting for that and who’s going to pay for it?

@Redshift: I’m leaving with the Adams Morgan office. So if I’m there, I’ll subtly and awkwardly work your username into conversation with everyone I meet until I find you. Or you can look for the vaguely Jewish looking guy with the woody Allen glasses.

Morgan and all of the armchair architects and engineers in this thread are talking out of their asses. They have absolutely no idea of all of the parameters involved in the decision making of the designers to locate equipment where it was.

Uh, that’s pretty much the point everybody was making. That there are shitloads of constraints—existing old building and equipment, an operational critical facility, probably inadequate structure, and always limited funds—and that the designers probably did their best given those constraints. So Piers Morgan can go fuck himself—or write a really, REALLY big check.

The interview you quoted identified the doctor as a Vice President of the institution not just a doctor practicing there. what exactly is wrong with asking someone who presumably, given his title, has some role in running the hospital (and is almost certainly extremely well paid for it)questions about what appears to be an administrative failure?

Something clearly went wrong here and this doctor appears to be one of the people responsible for this failure, why shouldn’t he be put on the spot? The reason this country is in the shape it’s in is that are extremely well paid elites (such as this doctor) are never held accountable for their failures.

@ronin122: Yet this guy is a dick because he, not an engineer or expert is lost because he doesn’t know this? Even you and all of us don’t know for sure if the hospital f’ed up because they didn’t address this issue or just are allowed to ignore this problem? The design for a emmergency center now requires that generators run even with flooding and old buildings are – maybe – ignored? Isn’t it the job of the reporter to ask the question of the person who the hospital has sent to officially explain what happened? Is not the spokeperson the one responsible to explain this detail? Would it not be wrong for the reporter to explain it by putting words into this person’s mouth?

Also, Morgan’s eyes. Too fucking close together. And small. Ugh. Honestly I’ve come around on Bill O’Reilly though. He’s a dick, but there at least seems to be some self-awareness to his act. Or maybe I’m giving him a pass because he’s Irish. But he always struck me as your dickhead uncle who cuts a silent but deadly at thanksgiving dinner and smirks devilishly while looking at everyone’s reaction. Something makes him more like able, or maybe it’s because the rest of his ilk are just more reprehensible.

@Cermet: Once a building is built, it does not need to be brought up to building code that comes out in the future. Hospital licensing requirements include some upgrades to the physical plant, but an engineering upgrade of that scale probably was not required for an existing facility.

But Mitt has been an audacious motherfucker in completely changing what he says he thinks about everything whenever his people think he needs to! If that’s not the audacity of hope, in the sense of “audacity inspired by hoping that you’re going to be president,” I don’t know what is. Bam! Give that audacious man a presidency.

I would be obliged if someone could explain to me how, under our Constitution, a President is supposed to achieve sweeping progress on “an unorthodox agenda” by means of a “governing majority” that excludes a caucus that constitutes a unanimously acting majority of the House Of Representatives.

I believe it involves declaring the entire Republican party a terrorist organization being run by COBRA, followed by Obama personally leading GI JOE into a pew-pew blue and red lazer battle where he personally blows up their headquarters with them still in it and then appoints the joes as the new members of the House.

Busy as usual, 10 hour shifts, observing the national IQ falling daily thanks to our corporate media whores, trying to avoid thinking how simple chemistry and electronics could make this world so much better.

@suzanne: Which I indicated might be the case (only that new requirements- the issue is whether the reporter is a dick for asking why the generators failed – finally, the spokesman said why. Then the reporter wanted to know if this is something that should have been addressed with advanced warning – sounds like any reporter would ask this. That is really the only point that was central to this disscusion.

Disagree with you on this. If you’ve been in NY at all recently, you basically have these self-congratulatory pieces fellating Bloomberg and Christie for doing such an awesome super job and the idea that the whole thing is running smoothly.

There’s a serious lack of skepticism, and I see people treating ConEd executives like they’re Iraq war vets.

I don’t think it’s out of line to ask why power companies (like ConEd) weren’t prepared to restore services more quickly, especially because Hurricane Irene had its way with us last year. They obviously didn’t learn or prepare accordingly.

As for the VP physician guy, as vice president of the hospital service, it’s not out of line to treat him as if he had authority. Now, I could be misunderstanding what Vice President means, because some organizations have a billion of them, but your characterization of this guy as basically just some random doctor is unfair.

He had a point he was pounding: Don’t put backup generators where big tidal surges can get them. The dude who was on show, I guess, had no control over that. He should have acknowledged that there were problems there & moved on.

@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: The thing with generators is you need to store large amounts of diesel fuel next to them, and you need a way to transport more fuel to them when elevators may or may not be functioning. This tends to make placement near the ground a necessity.

Everyone wants to put generators on the penthouse. A barrel of diesel weighs almost 400 pounds. Good luck dragging it up the stairs.

I might also question the wisdom of putting large quantities of flammable liquid above thousands of patients in the most easily storm damaged part of the building.

Emergency generators are designed to use an emergency fuel supply, usually diesel or natural gas*, and to mix that fuel with air to be ignited for combustion to occur (the ever popular combustion triangle). When a generator is buried under water its air supply is removed. Thus, thwarting the ever popular combustion triangle.

What I want to know, is why didn’t these doctors change the laws of physics? Or move the generators to the roof before the storm got there. Or use their doctor powers to change the path of the storm or divert the rising waters.

*lots of fuel tanks floated to the surface (if buried) or down the street, which would also have thwarted the ever popular combustion triangle. Why didn’t these doctors move patients from the upper floors so that flammable and explosive fuels could be stored on the roof away from possible harm? Clearly we need answers.

Every year, hell, every DAY now, I get more and more convinced that it is the corporate media that is most, if not single-handedly, responsible for destroying America.

You and me brother, you and me.
IT started in the Clinton years and has escalated ever since.
I have been saying for years that the media is as much to blame, if not more so for our descent to third world status as politicians are.

when I watched a complicit media not only set back, but aid and abet the theft of a presidential election, I knew it was only a matter of time until the democracy we had flourished under was no more. Our corporate whore media has been on the job faithfully since then.

@blingee:
Everyone said what I wanted to say. I’m in IT, and I am responsible for the cable access station in my town.
We can’t have a generator at our current site, and we would not have the money to do so if we did.

National Grid has been increasingly unreliable in downtown (where we are, and where I live). We had an outage once that took the Mayor off the air during her inauguration. We heard about it. (I also said something to the loudest complaintant. I can’t repeat it here.) Judas Escargot would know what I mean (he’s not the guy who complained.)

I also recall, from listening to WCBS 880 all night Monday, that Con Ed had themselves shut down the steam service that night. Not much cogeneration can do in those circumstances.

@Nerull:
The colo that the Gawker empire runs on lost power for that reason: pumps and tanks in the basement. One of the commentariat on whatever site I saw this goes, “Well, why don’t they lift barrels up to the generators?”

@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: I can’t do neighborhood canvasses due to a bad back and knees. I won’t do phone calls because I am besieged all year around with phone calls from various “worthy” organizations and I’m sick of getting the calls. I refuse to add to someone else’s burden of phone calls.

A couple of years ago my father, may he rest in peace, went to the great Valhalla in the sky for rightwingers, and I inherited some money. (I miss the old man but not his politics.) So I’m able to donate and get a small amount of amusement knowing that he would not approve of my choices for political donation.

We all do what we can, and my hat is off to those of you who are canvassing and phoning.

I beg to differ. The doctor is an officer of a public entity and should have been either prepared to talk about what went on or replaced by someone who is. The was no issue as to whether the staff behaved well in evacuating the patients and consequently no informational value in the doctor’s entire performance of “We did great! Our people are the best! etc.”

Nor is it relevant that Piers Morgan is a 24K asshole. That fact does not obviate the fact that he asked reasonable questions about a serious issue and the spokesman for the hospital completely ignored the question.

There was a very unfortunate and preventable screwup that placed many of the patient’s lives in danger as well as those of the staff. It seems to me that is not some trivial point that should be ignored with the rhetorical equivalent of “USA! USA! Number ONE!”. The patients, the public, and NYU deserve answers to what happened, why it happened, and what is to be done about it. And yes, putting generators in a basement in a coastal area was not very smart when it was done and will become less so with each passing year.

@central texas: Gotta somewhat agree with Texas. If the guy is a hospital VP, he should have been thoroughly debriefed on what the problems were and how to deal with the media.

Yeah, it would be nice if Morgan were that tenacious with politicians, and I’d like a pony too. And extra dick points to him for pointing out that they had a whole week to prepare, as if you can revamp a fairly substantial generating system in 5 days.

@WarMunchkin: this, although slightly OT, bc Morgan is a real jerkwad in general …

Coming from someone who still doesn’t have power in Westchester county. ConEd has assigned a grand total of one crew to service Scarsdale, and got more generous for Greenburgh (which encompasses several towns) by dispatching two whole crews for thousands of people without power. The fact that they knew this was coming and didn’t have people or crews on hand and only decided to go with contractors after the fact is pretty frustrating for those of us who are looking at a Nov 11th official estimate of when the power comes back.

One of their officials actually stated something along the lines of “just because you don’t see the ConEd vehicles out in your neighborhoods doesn’t mean that our vehicles aren’t out there” (paraphrasing). Actually, that’s exactly what it means …

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